When knowledge is ours at the tap of a key, what is it we’re accumulating, and is it at the expense of another, more intuitive, kind of knowing? The word ‘fool’ derives from the Latin follis, one of whose meanings is ‘empty-headed person’. We can’t imagine such mindlessness but might it be possible that by ‘unknowing’ a thing we can start to see it properly? There’s a lot the fool doesn’t know – otherwise they wouldn’t be a fool. But can anyone be trusted to know anything? What can we be trusted to know?
A certain apprehension runs through these poems; a low-level hum of discordance between inner and outer worlds, between the sceptical and the wondering mind. Ideas of belief and objective truth play out in various ways, often through lone figures, thinking aloud in a wilful kind of performance of being.
Fool is Greta Stoddart’s fourth collection. Her third collection Alive Alive O was published by Bloodaxe in 2015. In 2023, Greta Stoddart won a Cholmondeley Award, a prize which recognises a poet's body of work.
Greta Stoddart’s poems combine exceptional poise and presence with impressive reach. Capturing the flow of life they are distinguished by their depth of thought, alertness and sense of the paradoxical… A recent collection Fool (2022) further demonstrates Greta Stoddart's ability to stretch what poetry can achieve. It confirms her as one of our most accomplished and ambitious poets. - Moniza Alvi, Judge for the 2023 Cholmondeley Awards
‘What is knowable, and how things are known, are themes of the collection. The Fool, a figure whose consciousness it often explores, may see more clearly through a gaze uncluttered by received ideas.’ – Carol Rumens, The Guardian, Poem of the Week
‘You know, I love Greta Stoddart. She’s so interesting. And the poems, like I say, they look so clinical and clean. It’s like she’s stripped away all the trimmings. And we go in there and it’s cold, but it’s fascinating. Do read, if you can, any poems from
Fool by Greta Stoddart.’ –
Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner's Poetry PodcastGreta Stoddart was born in 1966 in Oxfordshire. She grew up in Belgium and Oxford before going on to study drama at Manchester University, then at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She co-founded the theatre company Brouhaha in London, touring the UK and Europe. She has lived in Devon since 2007.
Her first collection, At Home in the Dark (Anvil Press Poetry, 2001), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2001 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second, Salvation Jane (Anvil Press Poetry, 2008), was shortlisted for the 2008 Costa Poetry Award. In 2007 she was nominated by Mslexia as one of the best ten contemporary women poets in the UK. Her poem ‘Deep Sea Diver’ was shortlisted for the 2012 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her third collection, Alive Alive O (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize. Her half-hour radio drama Who's There?, first broadcast on Radio 4's The Echo Chamber in 2017, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. Her fourth collection, Fool, was published by Bloodaxe in 2022. In 2023 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, a prize which recognises a poet's body of work.
